Broomfield is set to vote on temporary ban of marijuana businesses

Measure would allow for residents to uphold or reverse council's action in 2014

By Megan Quinn Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
02/24/2013 02:00:00 PM MST

Broomfield council vote on marijuana business ban

What: City Council's second vote on an ordinance that would ban marijuana-related businesses through January 2015

When: 6 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Council Chambers at George Di Ciero City and County Building, 1 DesCombes Drive, Broomfield

More info: : Find the agenda for the meeting at broomfield.org/council; click "Council Agendas" in the yellow bar on the left.

BROOMFIELD -- A ban on marijuana businesses appears to be on its way in Broomfield, but the industry's true future lies in 2014, when residents will have the last say on the marijuana industry in the city and county.

City Council on Tuesday will make a final vote on an ordinance that would temporarily ban marijuana-related businesses. The ban is meant to give the state time to sort out regulations and rules in the wake of Amendment 64. The amendment passed last November made marijuana legal in Colorado for adults 21 and older.

The plan likely includes a citizen vote, too. As it is written, the temporary ban includes a clause that would allow Broomfield residents to vote in November 2014 to either uphold the ban or approve pot-related businesses.

Residents last voted on marijuana in 2010, when they banned medical marijuana businesses in Broomfield.

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Officials who keep track of marijuana issues say 2014 is a long way off, but there is plenty to sort out and many questions about how marijuana businesses could impact Broomfield's tax revenues, safety and culture

.'Debate and puzzlement'

Is Broomfield a good place for pot-related businesses, such as retail shops or testing facilities? It will be hard to predict how residents will answer that question when a 2014 vote comes up.

Broomfield voters historically favor marijuana use. They voted in favor of legalizing both medical marijuana in 2000 and recreational marijuana use in the 2012 election.

"We're definitely getting mixed messages," City Councilman Sam Taylor said at a past council meeting.

If voters say yes to recreational dispensaries in November 2014, council would have until the end of January 2015 to figure out the regulatory nuts and bolts of how retail, manufacturing, testing, cultivation or other pot-related businesses could function. January 2015 is when the ban -- if approved Tuesday -- would sunset.

Broomfield would have to decide factors such retail shops' distance from schools and whether to allow growing operations in certain areas of the city, said City and County Attorney Bill Tuthill.

Cities such as Boulder already have a medical marijuana industry, which Broomfield could use as a model when making decisions about recreational pot shops, he said.

In Broomfield, however, medical marijuana businesses are banned, so the city doesn't have baseline rules and regulations related to pot shops.

If voters approve marijuana businesses, the council would have a three-month window between the election and the ban's sunset to work out the details.

"It's a tight time frame, admittedly, but it's doable when we have the benefit of seeing how (pot businesses) have shaken out in other communities," Tuthill said.

Broomfield isn't the only city to consider a ban or moratorium. Lafayette, Louisville, Erie, and Longmont have all enacted or are considering moratoria on pot-related businesses, while Superior has a temporary ban on recreational marijuana-related businesses.

Most of the cities with a moratorium or ban are still waiting for state-level clarifications on marijuana-related rules, such as the legality of cannabis "clubs," or businesses that allow patrons to bring their own weed to smoke on the premises.

Tuthill said there is "quite a bit of debate and puzzlement" around regulation details, but one thing is for sure: Amendment 64 has legalized marijuana for adults in Colorado. Broomfield cannot ban marijuana, just the industry surrounding it.

"We're focusing on banning marijuana businesses, but we're not banning individual possession and consumption," he said.

How big a boost to Broomfield's coffers?

If legal weed businesses are in Broomfield's future, the city would have to regulate retail pot shops like any other business. That includes collecting sales tax.

Some proponents of recreational marijuana have applauded its potential to infuse the state with more sales tax revenue.

In one estimate by the Colorado Center on Law and Policy, it could offer more than $32 million in new revenue for the state budget and $14.5 million in new revenue for local governments before 2017.

Broomfield could collect its own chunk, but Pat Soderberg, Broomfield's finance director, said there are too many factors up in the air to predict how legal marijuana facilities could affect future sales tax in the city.

Broomfield's sales tax is between 8.15 percent and 8.35 percent, depending on where residents shop, according to the finance department.

Soderberg said some obvious factors, such as the number of marijuana businesses and the volume of customers willing to shop there, would play into generating sales tax revenue, "but it would be difficult to predict how much," she said.

Yet the finance department has examined statewide estimates drawn up when Amendment 64 was introduced. The numbers Broomfield used calculated the potential for a 0.25 percent-to-1.09 percent sales tax increase statewide, Soderberg said.

Broomfield's share of that might be a sales tax increase anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000 a year, but Soderberg said she is not taking that too seriously.

"There's a lot of uncertainty, so I wouldn't stick to that number," she said.

Tracking crime and punishment

While supporters of marijuana business use sales tax as a positive enhancement for communities, critics of recreational pot businesses say the industry will create more problems than money.

Back in August, a report from a Congressional drug control group showed that Colorado is a significant region where drug dealers divert medical marijuana from patients and sell it in states where the drug is illegal.

A Broomfield bust from June was among more than 70 statewide examples of illegal diversion listed in the report, which was written by the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas group.

Sgt. Jim Gerhardt of the North Metro Task Force, comprised of law enforcement personnel from across the north-metro region, including Broomfield, said the crimes are serious.

But he said marijuana-related crimes are just as common in Broomfield as they are in other metro-area cities of the same or bigger size.

Broomfield "is not a haven (for marijuana), but it is not a rare occurrence, either," he said.

Tuthill said most of those citations were not the primary offense, and it is rare that someone is cited for pot possession, alone.

For example, shoplifters arrested for stealing merchandise also might get citations when officers find weed in their pockets during a search.

Davis said about half of those marijuana violations come from adults.

Now that marijuana is legal for those older than 21, he expects to get a bit of a break from those cases.

"We expect it to go down by 150 or 200 this year," he said.

Yet Tuthill said those 150 or 200 cases will be minors who aren't old enough to take advantage of Amendment 64. He stressed that law enforcement will still be citing minors caught using or possessing weed.

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